Owner's Manual: Regain Your Confidence

How to rebound from a bad race

The emotional side of racing can be as unpredictable as a marathon course, with high points, up and downs, and hidden potholes. When you run a good race, everything in the world feels right. You trained hard, you raced hard and the results gave you the personal satisfaction to justify your sacrifices to inspire you to do it again. But no one has a great race every time out, so what happens when the results aren't as you had hoped?

After a less-than-satisfactory race, we are often left with feelings of helpless, hopeless despair. For some, that might seem a little dramatic, but for others, it's a harsh reality. Depression, frustration and self-doubt can linger long after the race, harming our self-confidence, and affecting the outcome of our training and future races. How can you insulate yourself against those detractors? Here are a few strategies that will help you to get over a poor performance, regain your confidence and run to your potential the next time you step on the line.

The Three Rs

1. Re-live

In rebounding from a poor race, your mindset will affect how you understand and explain what happened. Developing some explanation – for yourself and for others – for the lackluster effort is usually the first step in determining whether and how you will move forward. Running a poor race can be devastating because there is an assumption that you're "just not good enough" despite all of the effort and emotion you've put into your training.

To avoid lingering despair, it's necessary to distinguish between the things that were in your control versus things that were not. Often, you'll find, the performance was not a reflection of your physical capabilities, but rather, a representation of your mental state. To begin to identify the causes, make a list of anything you think might have hurt your performance. Consider things like dehydration, lack of concentration, the weather on race day, negative thoughts or even a loose shoe.

Next, draw a large circle, and inside of it write down the things from your list that you believe were in your control. Outside of the circle, write down the things from your list that you believe were out of your control. Effort and mental preparation are factors that are controllable, while factors such as style or skill level of the opponents, running conditions and the environment (even a hilly course) are things that athletes cannot control.

Studies show that athletes who view their effort and performance as main contributions to their outcome can do better in the future than those who attribute other external factors (even luck) to a poor performance. Once you focus on the factors that are controllable, you work to improve what went wrong and let go of any angst associated with things out of your control. Self-doubt and fear develop as a result of not knowing why. Now that you know why you had a poor performance, you can work toward preventing it from happening again.

2. Replace

To be successful you must learn to deal with and master failure and consider obstacles as stepping stones rather than barriers. Instead of ruminating and harboring negative thoughts, reframe the meaning of those bad races and use the experience as a means to getting stronger. Failure can get you closer to success than a positive result if you learn from poor performances and then forget them.

Studies show that cognitive restructuring strategies, such as positive self-talk, often lead to increases in confidence levels prior to competition. There will always be feelings of anxiousness before a race, and it's OK to acknowledge the anxiety. But consider it a sign that indicates you're ready to succeed and not as a sign that you might fail. And when you encounter pain during a race, acknowledge it, but think of it as a temporary discomfort necessary to achieve your end goal.

Positive self-talk doesn't come naturally to everyone, but with practice, you can develop a continuous stream of encouragement that runs through your head. Trusting your training and reminding yourself that you are strong and fit enough to run to your expectations is a good start. If those positive thoughts are reinforced enough, they will become automatic. Once a positive state of mind becomes automatic, you can focus on the task at hand during competition, and therefore, maintain peak performance until the end.

3. Rehearse

After a bad race, runners have a tendency to always "see" what they don't want to happen instead of what they want to have happen. To stop the detrimental feelings of fear and self-doubt from diffusing into your next race, it's necessary to prepare your mind, just like you prepare your body. Athletes who are confident tend to focus their thoughts and images on coping with the environment and the opponent, on mastering the task, and on the rewards of success rather than worrying about performing poorly and the consequences of failure.

Mental imagery scripts are a good way to help prepare yourself for any mental setbacks that you may encounter. By rehearsing the event ahead of time – start with your pre-race warm-up and go through every aspect of the course until you reach the finish line – you'll be prepared to overcome any predictable setbacks that hurt your previous performance. By changing the channel, you can begin to focus on running well, feeling fast, sharp and smooth, instead of giving in to what you fear. The more internal practice of the positive images, the quicker you'll snap out of the performance difficulties or rebounding from a bad race.

Imagine Success

The first step to responding to your fears in a positive way is to recognize them. List three things you fear during competition so you can learn to respond to them. Then, using your imagination, create a story about yourself facing your fears and overcoming them. Begin by listing three of your strengths as a runner, and creating a script about how you can overcome your fears using the strengths that you listed above. Make your story as detailed and vivid as possible, and make sure you are clear about how you feel and what you say to yourself to overcome the fear.

The first question you should consider is, "What will it be like?" This refers to thoughts and performance when faced with obstacles, surprises and disappointments. Read that story each night leading up to a race. By preparing to face your fears ahead of time, you will be prepared to deal with anything that is thrown your way.

Finally, move forward with confidence. Your previous unsatisfactory race (and the corresponding disappointment) was just a solitary event. It doesn't define you, and it doesn't determine your future. Part of the "envisioning" is to mentally set yourself on a forward-moving path, retaining only what you need from the past event.

Your task is to implement your plan with faith, reduce the negatives and create positive messages, images and emotions. With resilience, you can grow as a runner and create a mindset that will accelerate your path to success.